Twenty-six years of friendship is phenomenal. Nothing lasts that long. Partners come and go, styles fade and the size of our waistline grows, it’s life that’s what it does. But I’m here to say I’ve been one lucky girl to have two very generous, loving, and humoring friends. They have stuck with me through all my stupid shenanigans, short attention span, and obnoxious banter.
So in honor of my two best friends birthday, I’ve made a list of top ten memories that encompasses our hate to love memories in no particular order.
1. That one time when Ester and I hired a stripper for Stacey’s birthday, it was all in good fun, until the time was up. We all hovered over our male dancer as he awkwardly packed up his boombox and g-string in silence. Leaving us to stare at his bodacious body, twiddling your thumbs.
2. Secretly I like to make people cry, I don’t know why, but it’s a thing. So I found a perfect opportunity after one of our friend’s wedding. Stacey, Ester and I were good and drunk, getting ready to leave when I grabbed Ester who has a fear of being touched. Hugged Ester hard enough to squeeze some unicorn teardrops from her. Apparently, she cried all the way back home while her boyfriend drove. Was I happy to make my best friend cry? Yes, yes I was.
3. Do you remember your first special brownies, well for us it was during our college years, believe me, it was the first and the last? The only thing I remember saying was, “I don’t feel a thing, I need more,” and the last words before I passed out in a friends bed hiding underneath the covers “don’t let them rape me.”
4. In Junior High School I had no friends, big surprise there. So I profiled the only other Asian in the school with no friends. That was Ester, Stacey, on the other hand, had numerous friends, a dorkier version of the Benetton ad if you will. But I digress, back to the only solo Asian, I’d stalk Ester like a pretty little prey in the midst of the concrete jungle, and attached myself to her. Quite literally asking “why don’t you be friends with me” or “You’re Asian, I’m Asian, we’re meant to be” or “You have no friends, I have no friends.” By then Ester would fume and walk away in a fury.
5. Stacey’s strange quest of photographing her friends peeing and pooping.
6. That time I made my friends take “artistic” pictures of them, til this day I still don’t know what it all meant.
7. Blindfolding my friends, kidnapping them into my car, driving very very far.
8. Testing out Ester’s strength the hard way, in high school for her birthday I placed a string bikini on her head. In front of all her honor roll peers. That’s when she grabbed me by my hand, with her hand of steel. Never again, I learned my lesson.
9. Love it or hate it but we would eat a bagel, cream cheese and cholate chip cookie sandwiched between.
10. Lastly were always each other’s dates, when one one asked us to the school dances. Yes, something not everyone likes to admit but there you have, we were the queens of “going stag.”
Thank you, ladies, for being friends with this nut job, I don’t know how you stand to be near me. I won’t ask why. Let’s keep this thing going till we’re forced to go stag into our centennial.